


Woman Out of Time

by saiyanshewolf (gossamerstarsxx)



Series: Shot Through the Heart [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Alcohol, Battle Couple, Blood and Injury, F/M, First Aid, Getting to Know Each Other, Gun Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together, Major Character Injury, Non-Chronological, One Shot Collection, Pre-Relationship, Shooting Guns, Unorthodox Use of Alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 18:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13595847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gossamerstarsxx/pseuds/saiyanshewolf
Summary: MacCready should have refused the whole damn job as soon as Antha said ‘Gunners.’





	Woman Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> A few things that prompted this particular story:
> 
> One was wondering just how the Sole Survivor goes about telling all their companions that they’re 200+ years old. Obviously some of these conversations are in game, like with Piper and Nick, but I don’t think all of them are (or maybe they are and I just forgot, that’s also possible). Either way, I thought it would be fun to explore the way MacCready first finds out about Antha being pre-war.
> 
> Another is the fact that MacCready is one of those characters that just can't stop whumping on. I don't know what it is about him, but there's so much potential for angst there, and I love it. My favorite thing to play with is his guilt. Most of the time people focus on his survivor's guilt over Lucy, but I like to explore the guilt he might have over his work with the Gunners.
> 
> The last thing is the concept of the Stimpak. I know game mechanics require healing items like that, but it ends up making things a little too easy when you’re trying to write fic. You can check the end notes for my headcanon on Stimpaks.
> 
> Updated 12/30/2018.

# 1.

She should have left him...of course, he should have refused the whole damn job as soon as Antha said _Gunners_.

He starts to ask her what the hell she's thinking, asking him of all people for help with the Gunners, but if she's asking it means she doesn't know. Before he can figure out a way to tell her, she explains that the Gunners have kidnapped a Minuteman.

A Minuteman who is a mother of two.

Instead of explaining why she ought to take Hancock, or Cait, or Deacon (or anyone else) MacCready finds himself following her through the winding, ruined streets of Boston until they come upon a safe house.

It isn't one he knows, thank God, but the symbol stenciled on the crumbling old brick is familiar. It makes his stomach churn to look at it.

"I wish I knew how many they'll be," Antha whispers, scratching Dogmeat behind one ear as they survey the area around the safe house.

"Squad, probably," MacCready mumbles, "So not too many. Somewhere between six and twelve, I think."

He peers through his scope and pretends to search for traps to hide his face. There is no 'probably' about it, no thinking required on his part. Squads moved prisoners; the squad would be larger or smaller depending on the number of prisoners or the danger of the route.

"How should we do this?" Antha asks.

He doesn't look at her. "Quiet, if we can."

At length, they pick their entry point: a first-floor window on the side of the building. From what MacCready can tell most of the Gunners seem to be on the second floor. He can't decide whether he hopes Winlock and Barnes are with them, or if he hopes no one recognizes him at all.

They remain undetected all the way up to the second floor, following Dogmeat as he tracks the woman's scent. MacCready has to throw out an arm to stop Antha from triggering tripwires more than once, but before long Dogmeat stops in front of a locked door and begins to pace. MacCready holds his breath as Antha picks the lock and steps inside, already knowing what she'll find behind it: a makeshift cell, or perhaps a few. The only question is...

"Goddamn it."

He closes his eyes and swallows with an effort. Steeling himself, he follows her into the room.

The cell is in the corner of what must have once been an office. An overturned Steelcase desk lies on the rubble-strewn floor, flanked by fallen file cabinets. The wall in the corner has a sloppy Minuteman symbol chalked on the faded wallpaper next to a crude cage of rusted pipe and scrap metal, closed with a chain and padlock. A woman lies inside the little prison, her stiff body slumped against the bars. The left side of her flannel shirt is dark with dried blood and her face is a lifeless mask.

Dogmeat whines as Antha approaches the cell, her hands curled into fists. She wipes her eyes against her forearm and smudges her face with dirt.

"Watch my back while I pick this," she murmurs, and kneels in front of the padlock.

MacCready turns away, positioning himself near the door. A leaden weight has settled in his chest and it hurts to breathe.

_I was a part of this. Never mind I hated it. Never mind I left. I was a part of this and I can't take it back._

His guilt is counterproductive, a distraction he has learned to ignore. Right now, however, it is proving difficult to distance himself; Antha sniffles behind him as she picks the lock to the dead woman's cell. He knows when she turns around the grime on her face will be shot through with the clean tracks of her tears.

A dead woman.

A dead Minuteman.

A dead mother, with two children who will never see her again.

_Because of the Gunners._

The corpse in the cell is a stark, sickening reminder of what the Gunners do - what MacCready had once helped them do - and the guilt is nauseating. He swallows past the knot of disgust in his throat and tries to concentrate on doing his job, but even those few moments of distraction prove disastrous.

Dogmeat lays his ears back and wrinkles his snout, growling, but MacCready is too slow to catch on. He doesn't even hear the shot before white-hot pain punches through his right shoulder and all hell breaks loose. On reflex, he flattens himself against the wall as the bullets rain down.

"Antha!" he hisses, firing blind around the corner, "Pretty sure we're not alone!"

"Five seconds! Dogmeat, hold!"

Dogmeat slinks up next to MacCready, hiding himself along the wall and snarling low in his throat.

"We know it's you, MacCready! Come on out and maybe we'll take it easy on you!"

He has to bite his tongue to keep from swearing out loud. He is about to tell Antha to get a move on when the cell door creaks open at last. Risking a glance over his shoulder he sees Antha reaching inside, snatching something from the corpse - a necklace, maybe. Some keepsake for the kids. She stuffs it into a pocket of her Vault suit.

A bullet clips the corner of the wall and MacCready comes close to swearing again. He leans out just enough to blind fire, pain radiating from his shoulder all the way down his arm, then flattens himself again the wall once more.

"All right, I've got - shit, Mac!" He blinks, turning his head to look at her in bewilderment. Antha doesn't often say his name, let alone calls him by a nickname.

She reaches for him, grabs him by the lapels of his duster and drags him further into the room, snatching him down behind the overturned desk. Dogmeat follows them, keeping his belly low to the ground and his teeth bared.

MacCready reels, thrown off balance, and stumbles to a knee.

"The heck did you do that for?!" He snarls, just as he catches sight of the blood dripping to the floor beneath him. He raises a shaking hand to his shoulder and his fingers come away slicked red.

"Well, sh - crap."

"This is bad," Antha mutters. "I think it went through clean, but still, I don't think this will help for long." She shoves his duster back from his shoulders and jabs a Stimpak into him beneath the wound. "How many of them are there?"

"Three," he mumbles, "Antha, they're coming, we gotta -"

"Shut up and hold still." She tears his shirt open and digs in a pouch on her belt, producing a stack of clean, folded cloths that she presses against the wound. "Hold that."

MacCready holds them. By now he has learned to pick his battles when it comes to Antha. He closes his eyes, shuddering as the rush of the Stimpak hits and the pain recedes. He doesn't protest because there is no time. Just as Antha secures the makeshift bandage, one of the three remaining Gunners enters the room.

Dogmeat leaps over the steel desk before either he or Antha can call him off. The Gunner fires, but the little vest of dog armor Antha had made does its job. Dogmeat's front paws slam into the Gunner's sternum and he hits the ground with a rough, choked gasp, struggling to breathe - the impact has knocked the breath out of him.

A moment later Dogmeat's jaws close around his throat and he ceases to breathe at all.

Two more Gunners push forward, screaming in fury, but Dogmeat darts behind the desk again, out of danger. MacCready reaches for his rifle, but it's around behind his back and the Gunners are far too close. A bullet clips his cheek and he is certain the next one won't miss.

To his surprise, Antha shoves him down and slides in front of him. The .44 thunders in her hand as she fires six times in rapid succession. The first three shots punch a wide, gaping hole in the gut of the one who had clipped him, but the last three only crack the body armor of the remaining Gunner private.

"Say byebye, Vault Girl," the private sneers, and before MacCready even realizes what he is doing, he is on his feet, smashing the butt of his rifle into the private's face, shattering her nose in a spray of blood and giving Antha more than enough time to reload. She dispatches the screaming woman with a shot to the head, but MacCready can hear the rest out there, swearing and shouting orders.

"Three  down, right?" Antha says. "Only nine left?"

"Let's hope so," MacCready mutters.

# 2.

Antha and MacCready are both wrong. There are not nine Gunners left; there are twenty one, and it isn't a squad, it's a section.

The Gunners force them to fight their way through the entire safe house. It is the first time since his last ill-fated attempt on Med-Tek that MacCready can remember fearing for his life with such desperation. It's a cover-to-cover sprint, an endless cacophony of gunfire, and it isn't long before they are both looting ammo off corpses to supplement their dwindling supply. During one all too brief lull in the fighting Antha commands Dogmeat to hide until all is clear, but she has to do it twice before he listens, whining as he slinks away to find safety.

The bullet hell begins again not long afterward, and as he breaks cover to move up MacCready gets hit again, in almost the same place as last time. The agony that ricochets through the right side of his body is sickening; he throws himself down behind the closest semblance to cover he can find, clutching his shoulder, unable to stop himself from swearing under his breath as blood pours through his fingers. He tries to gather himself enough to warn Antha, to tell her to stay put, because it's only a matter of time before someone advances close enough to take him out.

Before he can so much as catch his breath, however, Antha is on her feet, her scarred face contorted into a mask of hatred. A bullet tears open the left side of her Vault suit near her hip and the rush of blood stains the blue fabric a deep purple.

Antha barely flinches. Her eyes flash toward him, green as a radstorm and just as furious, and as she pulls her arm back, she snarls through her teeth for him to get down. She holds a frag grenade in her palm. The pin is in her mouth.

MacCready curls himself into a ball. He hears one of the Gunners across the way shout, "GREN -" before the explosion cuts him short.

He is far too close to the blast for comfort. Debris rains down on him and he hears Antha's footsteps from what seems like a great distance. There are more gunshots, garbled words, even another explosion further off, and all the while he is bleeding, until he can't be sure if his distorted perception is because of the grenade or the blood loss.

A greyish haze fills the world until something sharp pierces his skin near his wound. The effect is close to instantaneous; the colors of the world bleed back in and his hearing sharpens. His heartbeat first steadies and then races, and at length he sits up and opens his eyes as his breathing evens out.

Antha crouches over him, but she isn't looking at him. She is winding his ragged green scarf around and around his shoulder, beneath his arm. She cinches it so tight he hisses in pain, but there is no time to speak; already the Gunners have regrouped.

MacCready picks up his rifle and goes back to work. He is slower, less steady, but he still pulls off enough headshots to help them push forward. It's slow going, but it's progress. With the help of another grenade, they force their way back to the first floor.

Before they can make another push, however, MacCready's vision darkens around the edges again. He touches his shoulder, presses his fingers into the wad of fabric bound around it; his scarf is soaked through.

He manages a rough laugh before he stumbles against the wall. Even with three doses of Stimpaks in his veins, he's only just keeping his feet.

 _I'm fucked_ , he thinks, pushing away from the wall and leaving behind a bloody smeared handprint. _I'm well and truly fucked._

They move forward to another position, then another, but before long he is too dizzy to aim, which in his opinion makes him nothing but dead weight. When Antha steadies him for the fifth time he pushes her away and tells her to leave him.

"Shut up, MacCready," she snaps, grabbing his hand and guiding it to one of the leather straps across her back. "Just shut up and stay behind me. There should be nothing but corpses back there, anyway."

The wound in her side is still bleeding. MacCready opens his mouth to tell her to worry about herself, then closes it, afraid that he might be sick. Antha shoves a Stimpak in above her hip, reloads her .44, and moves them forward.

Ten loud, bloody minutes later they tuck themselves away in a cave created by rubble and the collapsed ceiling. It isn't far from the entrance. By some miracle, they have taken out all but twelve of the Gunners, but the hallway between them and the way out contains six, and the area behind them six more - a small detachment had circled around in search of them.

MacCready doesn't so much sit as collapse, dizzy and shivering. Keeping his eyes open is difficult.

"Antha, just go," he mutters. "You're good enough with that thing to make it through, so go."

"Shut up," Antha hisses. "I'm trying to think."

"There's nothing...nothing to think about," he snaps. "I can't friggin' help you like this, all right?"

"What's your point?" Antha replies. "If you've got one, get to it. Otherwise will you please let me think?"

"My point is you need to friggin' leave me and get out!"

"That's not a point, it's an opinion," Antha mutters. "So shut up."

"Antha -"

She turns her head and glares at him. "What were my terms? Do what I say and be nice to my dog. Dogmeat's not here and you're not doing what I say, so do you wanna give me those caps back or what?"

"If I do will you friggin' go already?"

"No, but I will slap duct tape over your mouth," she whispers. "So shut the hell up."

MacCready shuts up. He doesn't have much of a choice. His eyes keep drifting shut, and it is becoming difficult to think straight, let alone argue.

Soon, Antha touches his good shoulder. He opens his eyes, trying to make them focus on her face.

"I've got a plan," she says. "I'll be right back, so you hang in there, you hear me?"

MacCready nods. There is no point in wasting his energy to fight with her, and the pain is creeping in over the Stimpaks; he doubts he'd be able to open his mouth without dropping every swear word in his vocabulary. For a while he does at least try to keep his eyes open, but there is a disconcerting stretch of blackness between watching Antha creep away and coming to when she touches his good shoulder again.

"You'll feel sick but this is the last time," she mumbles, flicking the cap off a Stimpak. "For better or worse."

She pulls back his shirt and duster as much as the makeshift bandage will allow and injects him again. The rush is nauseating - there is far too much synthetic adrenaline coursing through his system already. Still, the nausea is controllable for the time being, and the pain soon recedes.

"Can you stand? Make sure, because you can't test it out," Antha murmurs. "They've lost us for now, but once we break cover we've got to move."

MacCready shifts into a crouch and waits for a moment. He's still dizzy, but he thinks he can manage it.

"Yeah."

"Good. Now listen," Antha murmurs, leaning in close. "Stay behind me, okay? Hang on to me if you have to, I know you're dizzy as hell."

"What about…"

"Nobody's gonna get us from behind," she whispers. "You've got to trust me on that, okay?"

"Don't guess I've got much choice," he mumbles.

"Just trust me." She pulls out her .44 and turns. "C'mon."

MacCready takes a deep breath and follows suit. He doesn't need to hold on to her - not yet - but even though he draws his sidearm, he knows he won't be able to aim for shit. Dizziness aside, he's never been great with handguns.

"When I reload fire over my shoulder," she whispers. "Doesn't matter if you can't aim, just cover me. Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

They move.

Antha counts as she takes them out; after the third one MacCready hears footsteps coming toward them from behind.

"Antha…!"

"Don't worry," Antha whispers. "Don't worry."

She fires again, and again, then: "Four."

"We'll fuckin' kill you, MacCready!"

He turns his head. A figure appears in the doorway at the end of the hall behind them.

"We'll kill you and that little bitch!"

MacCready sneers. He turns and lifts his gun as the Gunner sergeant steps forward, and then the end of the hall explodes in smoke and screams.

Antha fires. "Five. Cover me, last one's coming."

MacCready blinks at the charred corpses at the end of the hall, then turns back toward Antha and fires wild over her shoulder.

_Frag mines. Where did she snatch those up?_

"You want my advice?" The last Gunner shouts from around a corner. "One woman to another? Don't fuckin' run with RJ MacCready!"

Antha fires again; she clips a chunk of plaster from the wall where the woman's face had been a moment before.

"He's a traitor, Vault Girl!" The woman taunts. "He ran out on the Gunners and he'll run out on you - if he doesn't get you killed first!"

Antha stiffens.

MacCready closes his eyes. He hadn't concealed his association with the Gunners on purpose...but neither had he tried very hard to tell her.

Either way, it isn't anything he can focus on right now. His head is swimming, and the nausea is growing unbearable; the Stimpaks are wearing off sooner as the blood loss becomes more serious. He gropes for her shoulder, half expecting her to shrug him off and let him fall, but she does nothing but push back against him in support.

"Ran out on the Gunners, huh?" Antha calls, aiming for the doorway the Gunner is using for cover. "Good to know he's got _some_  sense."

MacCready smiles weakly to himself.

"You're an idiot if you think that, Vault Girl! Nobody runs out on the Gunners!"

She peeks out to fire and Antha pulls the trigger. Half her skull disintegrates in a splatter of blood and brain; the body drops like a ragdoll.

"He did," Antha sneers under her breath.

MacCready starts to speak...and instead folds to his knees.

"Crap." He leans forward, so dizzy that the world pitches and heaves like the deck of a ship. "Think that was a few too many too fast, boss."

"It's okay." Antha kneels down next to him. "It's okay, we cleaned them out, we're safe, let me get you to a couch or something…"

MacCready shoves her away with his good arm and Antha tumbles backward onto her butt just as he throws up half digested mutfruit and Nuka-Cherry. The mess looks enough like blood to be disturbing, but Antha isn't put off in the slightest.

"Dammit, I really OD'd you," she murmurs. She rests a hand on his back and rubs it as if she touches him like this every day of her life, but MacCready says nothing; he can't, because when he opens his mouth all he does is dry heave.

It takes a couple minutes to get himself under control. Even when the nausea passes, it leaves his entire body feeling like rubber and his head so dizzy that he is almost afraid to open his eyes.

After making sure he won't be sick again, Antha slings his good arm around her shoulders. As she rises to her feet, she bites back a cry of pain. MacCready blinks his eyes open just in time to see the fresh blood gush into the fabric of her Vault suit.

"Put me down, you're hurt," he mumbles. The words come out sounding petulant as a child instead of irritable.

Antha huffs laughter. "Coming from you, that's hilarious. Come on, Mac. There's a bed in this room up ahead. Try not to think about what else might have been on it, all right?"

 

* * *

 

# 3.

Hours later, MacCready wakes to Dogmeat tugging at his shirtsleeve.

"All right, all right," he mumbles, pulling his arm away and shifting his aching body into a sitting position. "Christ, I'm awake. What is it, y'mangy mutt?"

Dogmeat whines and pulls at the hem of his pants.

"Lemme go, I'm comin'," MacCready says, resigning himself to being awake. "Just let me get some light in here."

Dogmeat wags his tail and trots into the shadows of the room. The lanterns had burned down while MacCready slept; he sighs, shaking his head as he fumbles in his pants pocket for his matches. The entire right side of his upper body is so sore that just moving his arm makes him hiss in pain.

With stiff, stilted movements, he gets the lantern nearest to the bed lit. A warm yellow glow floods the room, illuminating Antha and Dogmeat both. Antha sits slumped against the wall with her rifle in her lap, facing the doorway as if she had dozed off while keeping watch, but when Dogmeat lets out a soft, anxious whine and shoves his nose beneath her chin, she doesn't so much as open her eyes.

MacCready frowns. "Antha?"

No response.

A vise bears down around his chest. He hurries over to her, trying to remember what had happened after she had dragged him to his feet out in the hall.

She had been bleeding; he remembers that, but she had refused to tend to herself first. He has a vague recollection of embarrassment, of Antha pulling off his duster and peeling him out of his blood-tacky shirt despite his protests. From there she had been lost, and he'd had to tell her what to do, how to dig the bullet out.

MacCready's empty stomach churns at the memory. So much blood...but it hadn't only been his, had it? He remembers telling her to do something about that wound above her hip; must have told her more than once because she had told him to shut up more than once.

With his heart in his throat he kneels down next to her and moves her rifle out of her lap to check. There is a ragged tear in the side of her Vault suit, and the fabric around it is stained a dull, matte purple. Her bloodied suit had dried against the wound, resulting in a scabbed, clotted mess that will reopen the minute she moves. There is no sign of a bandage, or even an attempt at one.

_Damn it, why don't she ever do what I tell her?!_

"Antha. Hey, Antha, c'mon," he says, tilting her head up.

Her breathing is slow, and she is far too pale, but she opens her eyes.

"Mac? Wha'smatter?"

"You," he grumbles, swallowing his relief to find her responsive. "C'mon, you idiot."

Gritting his teeth against the pain, he throws her arm around his neck and heaves her to her feet. He'd rather just pick her up - her wound would be less likely to reopen that way - but with his own injuries he knows better than to try.

Sure enough, as soon as they move toward the bed Antha swears under her breath, her hand moving to her side. MacCready eases her down onto the bed.

"Rude," Antha mumbles. "You're an idiot too, you know. Telling me to leave you. Like I'd ever."

"I'm a friggin' hired gun, I'm not worth dying over," he retorts. "Where's the stuff you used on me yesterday?"

"Used 'em all," she says, swaying. "What's the matter? Bleeding'll stop soon. Did before. S'fine. Just grazed me."

MacCready stares at her, dumbfounded and frustrated. "If it had just grazed you there wouldn't be this much fuh - friggin' blood all over you!"

Antha shrinks back in surprise and he scrubs a hand over his mouth, trying to get a handle on himself.

"Sorry," he says, "Sorry, it's just - you didn't get grazed, you got clipped pretty damn bad and you've lost a lot of blood, all right?"

"S'okay. Can't be as much as you, though," she replies. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, it could be." He reaches around behind her neck and unties her bandana, folding it into a makeshift pad and pressing it tight against the wound. "Hold that. I got bandaged up. And I got jabbed with four Stimpaks in less than an hour. This hasn't even closed right. Damn thing was dried to your suit when I found you. Now where's your Stimpaks? I'm out."

"Stim…" She blinks at him, her eyes a little unfocused, then shakes her head. "Stimpaks. I'm out too. I, uh...well, I used the last one on Dogmeat last night, he came back kinda chewed up."

"Dog…" MacCready trails off, closing his eyes and making himself count to ten. Anger will help nothing, but he can't help wondering why she's like this, why she can't seem to understand the severity of her own injuries.

"Stay here," he says at length, rising to his feet and slinging his rifle over his shoulder with a wince. "Gunner squads run with at least one medic. Since this was a whole friggin' section I'm sure they had more than that. I'm gonna track down some supplies. And for the love of Christ, stay still."

He turns toward the door, but Antha cuts him off before he can walk away.

"Mac?"

He glances back at her. "What?"

"Why did you leave?" she asks. "The Gunners, I mean."

The question takes him off guard. He looks away in a hurry, pulling his hat down over his eyes.

"Later," he snaps. "Tell your mutt to stand guard, you're damn sure in no shape for it."

He slips into the hall without waiting to hear her reply.

 

* * *

 

# 4.

He finds the medics' supplies soon enough, and to his great relief the ragged hole in the side of Antha's Vault suit is large enough that she won't need to remove it for him to dress the wound. As soon as he tries to clean it, however, the skin breaks open yet again, slicking his hands in fresh blood. He ends up having to knock back the last of the vodka he has been using as a disinfectant just to steady his hands enough to put in a few clumsy stitches.

As he works, Antha doesn't make a sound.

"You eaten anything?" he asks, securing a bandage over the wound with duct tape.

"Ate last night while you were out," she mumbles. "You're the one who needs to eat, Mac. Radstag jerky's in my bag somewhere...not much else unless you want to go scavenge."

He considers arguing with her, then decides against it; he's not in the mood, and rest will do her as much good as food.

"Fine," he says, "At least get some sleep."

"Don't have to tell me twice."

She's out within minutes, lying on her back with one arm draped over her eyes like a swooning dame from a pre-war movie. MacCready shakes his head, settling down onto the floor where Antha had sat to watch while he slept.

He holds off on the radstag jerky - he doesn't have much taste for anything after so much nausea, and his teeth have been giving him hell. Cleaning his guns kills a couple hours; cleaning Antha's kills a few more. Eventually, however, his growling stomach gets the better of him and h pulls Antha's bag into his lap.

Before he can open it, Dogmeat lifts his head and flattens his ears against his skull, growling.

"Hey, what's the matter, boy?" MacCready asks. "Somebody out there?"

Dogmeat wrinkles his snout back and glares at MacCready.

"Oh shi - crap. You're mad at me," he mutters. "Listen, she told me I could get food out of her bag, it's fine!"

Dogmeat gets to his feet and MacCready holds up his hands in surprised surrender. "Antha! Hey, Antha, call your dog!"

Antha blinks her eyes open, reaching down to rest one hand on Dogmeat's back. "Down, boy, s'okay. He's okay."

Dogmeat whines, then trots over and licks MacCready's grimy face before flopping down next to him and rolling onto his back.

"Feed him something," Antha mumbles. She dozes off again, her arm dangling from the edge of the bed.

MacCready glances down at Dogmeat, who offers an apologetic whimper before rolling back onto his stomach and wagging his tail.

"You're some dog, you know that?" MacCready shakes his head, fishing a tin of dog food out of Antha's bag. He pulls the ring tab and empties the contents onto a clean patch of floor.

Dogmeat lets out a soft _wuff!_ and wags his tail again before digging in.

Tossing the empty can into the pile of bloody rags from his impromptu surgery the night before, MacCready rummages around for people food. Antha's bag isn't big, but it's still hard to find what he's looking for. She has separated everything into little containers of dull tin or packages wrapped in dark cloth, and the few oil lamps lighting the room aren't much help. He ends up opening the wrong container. The old tin he'd assumed to be full of radstag jerky contains nothing of the sort; what it does contain seems to be none of his business.

Inside the tin, on a bed of folded, patterned fabric, is a string of near flawless pearls, matching earrings, a matching bracelet, and a man's leather wallet. It is one of the folding pre-war kind, and it must have flopped open as MacCready wrestled with the lid. He glimpses an I.D. card, the worn edges of pre-war money, and a picture inside a little plastic pocket.

 _None of my business_ , he thinks. _She's from a Vault, it's just a box of heirlooms, stuff from her pre-war ancestors or something._

Still…

Glancing up at Antha to be sure she's asleep, he gives in to his curiosity, picking up the wallet and turning it around so he can look at the picture right side up.

He looks at it, then stares at it, eyes widening.

After a moment he lifts his head to study Antha's sleeping, scarred face, then glances back down at the picture.  He does this several times, his throat working as his mouth goes dry.

It's her.

The woman in the photo with all the green grass and blooming flowers, in front of a shiny new pre-war house with the edge of a gleaming pre-war car visible...the woman in the sleeveless lavender dress and mint-green apron, wearing pearls and high heels, the woman with thick, perfect black curls and flawless makeup, the woman with a tiny black-haired baby in her arms…

That is _Antha_.

It's no however-many-greats-grandmother, no pre-war ancestor. It's _Antha_ , and MacCready is in such a state of shock he doesn't realize Antha is awake until she speaks.

"Open the wrong tin?"

He jumps, scrambling to put the wallet away. "I, uh - I was looking for food and I just - I shouldn't..."

"I should have told you what the food was in," she answers, sitting up with a wince. "Give it here, I'll find it. I'm getting hungry, anyway."

MacCready swallows hard, then gets up and carries her the bag. Antha takes it from him and shifts backward until she's sitting up against the wall.

"Sit," she says, waving her hand at the edge of the bed as she rifles through her bag.

MacCready does as he's told, shamefaced and uncertain. After a moment Antha comes up with a different tin - different pattern, at least. It's the same size as the one with the wallet and pearls. She pries off the top and hands it to him.

"Grab me that whiskey?" She nods toward an unopened bottle on the battered end table, another part of the medics' supplies. "I don't wanna break my stitches reaching for it and we used all the vodka."

MacCready tosses a piece of jerky in his mouth as he grabs it for her, chewing on the left side; it still hurts, but not as much as he thought it might. It should be fine as long as he remembers to only use the left side. He opens the bottle and hands it to her, watching her drink, trying to decide whether she's angry with him.

"I miss ice," she mumbles, making a sour face. "I never thought I'd say that."

Bewildered, MacCready arches an eyebrow. "Antha…?"

She looks at him. There are dark circles of exhaustion under her eyes, but she seems more at ease than she has since he met her.

"I was frozen," she says. "Cryogenic stasis. So yes, that's me in the picture. Yes, I was alive before the war."

MacCready stares at her, speechless, as she reaches into her bag again and comes up with the picture. She holds it out to him.

"I didn't - I shouldn't have snooped," he mutters, looking away. "Sorry."

"It's okay. It's probably something I should have told you to begin with, but most of the time I don't feel like talking about it. You picked a good night to be nosy, I guess."

"I didn't -"

"MacCready, I'm messing with you," Antha says. "Here, I mean it. I don't mind."

MacCready glances at her, hesitant, then wipes jerky grease on his pants and accepts the picture. He can't stop himself from glancing back and forth again, still trying to reconcile the picture of the happy housewife and her baby with the scarred woman and her gunshot wound sitting next to him.

Antha's lips twitch in the ghost of a smirk, as if she knows what MacCready is thinking.

"I only thawed out about six months ago," she says.

MacCready can't stop himself. "You're fuh - you're kiddin' me!"

Even as he speaks, he realizes that she isn't kidding at all. It explains so much about her: the odd softness he had noticed in her features when they first met; how she is such a good shot yet so ignorant of how to use her skills; why she might not understand the severity of her injuries; her bizarre claims of coming from a Vault but not not being a Vault dweller.

For Antha, the pre-war days aren't even a year gone.

"Christ. I can't image what it must have been like, waking up to all this," he murmurs. "What about your family…? I see the baby, so I was just…"

He trails off as he notices the pain in Antha's eyes, wishing he had kept his mouth shut. She looks away and takes another drink.

"No one else made it out of Vault 111 alive," she answers. "No one except Shaun, my son. He was...someone kidnapped him while we were in cryostasis. I don't know how long it's been."

MacCready's heart clenches in his chest. He can't help but think of Duncan; it has been so long since he has seen him, but at least he knows where he is, knows he's still alive even if he's sick. The idea of someone snatching him away…

"Who did it?" he asks. His voice is far more rough than he had intended and Antha notices, studying him for a moment before she answers.

"I'd...rather not talk about that to be honest. But you can ask me whatever else you want." She takes a sip of whiskey and grimaces, then reaches toward his lap and snatches a piece of jerky.

"Are you sure?" MacCready asks. "If you don't want to talk about…"

"I don't mind talking about pre-war stuff." She starts to shrug and winces, her hand going to the makeshift bandage at her side. "I just don't want to talk about my family."

"That's fair," he says. "So what did you...can I ask what you did, or is that…?"

"What I did? You mean what was my job?"

MacCready nods. "Yeah. No offense, but this lady here doesn't seem like she could handle a mouse, let alone blow some bih - some  jerk's head off with a .44."

"I was a lawyer," she answers. "Well, sort of. I had only just gotten my degree. Never got to practice."

"Degree? I feel like I'm supposed to know what that means."

Antha's lips twitch. "I paid a school a lot of money to teach me to be a lawyer. When they were done, they gave me a piece of paper that said I'd learned everything. No one would hire me if I didn't have the paper."

MacCready wrinkles his nose and Antha laughs. He looks down at the picture again.

"You look like…" he trails off, once more glancing back and forth between Antha and the photo. When she hands him the whiskey he takes a swig, shakes his head, and hands it back.

"You look like something out of a magazine," he says absently. "The homey kind, not the sexy kind."

"Thanks for the distinction. I think."

Heat rises into his cheeks as he realizes what he has just said. "No! I mean - sorry, I'm not saying you couldn't be in - shit - crap, wait…!"

"Hey, don't worry about it." Antha laughs, taking another sip before handing the bottle back to him. "I'll take it as a compliment, just to spare you."

MacCready accepts the bottle from her with his face burning. Drinking more won't help, but it gives him a moment to get his thoughts in order.

"All I meant was you look so...so nice," he says at length. "Like a magazine housewife or something. It's not...you don't see people like that much out here."

"Well, you're not far off the mark," she answers, taking the bottle back. "I loved all that silly housewife stuff. I couldn't do it full time because I was in school, but Codsworth picked up the slack."

"You had Codsworth before the war too?"

Antha nods and drinks before handing him the whiskey again. "Now that I think about it, Nate always told me I was wasted on the housewife life. I wonder if that's why he got Codsworth in the first place?"

"Nate…?"

Antha's left thumb tucks inward as she spins her wedding ring around her finger; her right hand goes to her throat, closing around the ring she wears on a leather cord.

"My husband," she says. "The picture came from his wallet. I found it on...um. I found it in the Vault when I left. He didn't make it."

MacCready drinks, falling silent for a moment. He considers telling her about Lucy and Duncan both if only to let her know she isn't alone - that he can at least come close to understanding. As soon as the idea crosses his mind he drinks again, terrified by how easy it is for him to care about her, to want to comfort her.

Still, he can't bring himself to stay quiet.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, and means it.

"Thanks. He's the one who taught me how to shoot." She smiles, clutching the ring at her throat a little tighter before dropping her hand. "He was a sniper in the army."

MacCready smiles back at her, handing her the bottle. "He taught you well, then."

Antha snorts laughter. "Aren't you the one who fusses at me about choosing bad positions and taking stupid shots?"

"Hey, I never said bad or stupid," MacCready defends himself. "I said dangerous and reckless."

"Yeah, yeah." Antha drinks and trades the bottle back to him for another piece of jerky. "Come on, I know there's gotta be something else you want to know."

"All right, how did you get burned?" he asks, glad to change the subject. "I know burn scars when I see 'em, so I'm guessing that's why you shaved half your head, right?"

"Yeah." Antha runs a hand over the buzzed hair on the right side of her head. "My hairline is screwed up now, so this looks better. I'm kinda starting to like it. But the burn was from a Raider who got ahold of a laser rifle and came close to taking my head off."

Before MacCready can decide if he should ask or not, Antha tucks her hair behind her left ear and tilts her head, touching the thick scar along her left cheek.

"And this one is from a mole rat," she says. "Embarrassing, right? It happened just a couple hours after I woke up. I wandered outside with a .10mm and this suit and that was it. I had no idea how long I'd been frozen and the ugly bastards took me by surprise. I think I must have panicked because I don't remember much about what happened after that. Guess I must have stitched it up myself at some point."

"You kidding me? In those circumstances it's not embarrassing at all." MacCready drinks, already wondering if he should slow it down before the whiskey goes to his head. "I mean, you'd just woken up. Had to be like walking into a nightmare."

Antha takes the bottle as he hands it to her, then shrugs. "It's not all bad. At least I got to see the Grognak movie before they put me on ice."

MacCready's eyes light up.

They talk for hours after that, until Antha dozes off with her head against his good shoulder. MacCready, too tipsy to think much about it, eases her onto her back before stretching out beside her and passing out on his stomach.

The Gunners had never come up.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Stimpak** :  
> A powerful combination of synthetic adrenaline, painkiller, and blood coagulant, the Stimpak is meant to keep you on your feet and fighting long enough to escape immediate danger. For basic injuries that may be more than enough, but for severe ones like broken bones or gunshot wounds, additional medical attention is required as soon as possible. As with any powerful drug, injecting too many Stimpaks within a short amount of time has unpleasant side effects, including but not limited to high blood pressure, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting.


End file.
